Grandma's Cave by way of Telephone Trail

November 26, 2016 15 Skyliners headed out of Cottonwood for Oak Creek Canyon and a hike to Grandma's Cave by way of Telephone Trail. Another hiker joined us in Sedona making a total of 16. The parking area for Telephone Trailhead is at milepost 385.1 alongside 89A. Most of us got out and waited at the Telephone Trailhead while the drivers continued to position vehicles at another parking area, located next to the Cave Springs Campground entrance. We would bushwhack down the canyon from Grandma's Cave and end our hike there, so that is where we would leave vehicles for our return to Cottonwood. The driver of a vehicle following Dave Beach's van didn't see where Dave turned off of 89A at that parking area and ended up going much further up 89A before turning around. The result was a bit of a wait before we were all together to begin our hike.

Leading this hike, Lila Wright pointed out the rusty metal sign which read, “Trail 72, Telephone,” as we faced up canyon and walked on the road shoulder above the parking area while looking uphill to our right. The trail runs parallel to the highway a short ways before really beginning the steep climb up to the east rim of Oak Creek Canyon. Fortunately this route isn't all uphill. There are sections of fairly level hiking along intermediate ridge tops with some downhill in between. Nevertheless, some hiking guide books describe Telephone Trail as hard, very steep, and for experienced hikers only.

Early in the hike we looked over at a cliff on the slope of another ridge and saw what appeared to be a window in a cliff. Betty Wolters, Daisy Williams and I all thought that the window as seen on our cameras looked heart-shaped. The photograph I took (right) shows a large rock that has fallen between two cliffs and gotten stuck part way down, leaving a heart-shaped window below.

About half an hour later we were high enough for good views of Oak Creek canyon.

Looking down Oak Creek Canyon from Telephone Trail

Joanne took an up-canyon photo for me from her better viewpoint.

Looking up Oak Creek Canyon from Telephone Trail

A short distance later we came to the main attraction on the Telephone Trail, an interesting rock formation that contains several windows called, “the Peep Holes”. Although Grandma's Cave will have more appeal to those of us who are spelunkers at heart, the Peep Holes formation is itself very interesting. The formation is about “thirty feet long and twelve feet high”, according to a description in “Sedona Hikes” by Richard & Sherry Mangum on page 218 of their revised 7^th edition published in 2003¹. The below photographs show views through the windows and hikers moving on past the formation.

Looking through a peep hole                    Looking through a peep hole

Looking through a peep hole                    Moving on past the Peep Holes

Before following the other hikers down the trail beyond this unique formation, I paused to photograph, the “Kissing Rocks.”

The “Kissing Rocks” window or peep hole was so named by Ellis F. Price in his book, “hiking in and Around Verde Valley,” published in 2012. Ellis's photo is found on page 227 of his book². My image of “Kissing Rocks” (left) is shown here.

Upon leaving the Peep Holes, the trail goes down over some rocks, a bit of a difficult descent. At first it looked like the trail would take us so far down that it would make the next climb up further and steeper. But it wasn't as far down as it looked.

Somewhere between the Peep Holes and the rim there are the remains of several old telephone poles. I did not see them. A hiker later told me that she had seen one of the old phone poles. Between the Peep Holes and the rim the trail is sometimes along a ridge top and sometimes goes below a ridge top. From the top of a ridge we had a good view of the rock formation known as, “the Baby Carriage” (right. 2011 photograph). Ellis has a different idea as to what that rock formation looks like. He said it “looked more like Albert the alligator, from the old Pogo comic strip, with Pogo the Possum astride his neck, than a baby carriage.”

From another location I took the following photo of snow on the San Francisco Peaks.

The San Francisco Peaks from Telephone Trail

The final climb to the top of the east rim of Oak Creek Canyon is very steep but, very rewarding because we were in a beautiful fir forest all the way. Getting across the rim area to the ridge that the cave is on was very easy and mostly on an old road. Finding our way out along that ridge and getting down to the cave definitely was not easy. For some of the way I was sure we had taken the same route as we had taken on 22 October 2011. We knew that after going a certain distance out along that ridge we would need to go more to our left before descending to the cave. First before deciding where to go to our left, we stopped to eat a snack. Gary (left) found the best seat for a really great view.

When we reached the rocky ledge located directly above Grandma's Cave, Joanne photographed Lila (right) sitting atop the ledge, saying that she looked like she was “sitting on top of the world.”

We had become separated as we made our way down the spine of the ridge, wending our way through brush and over rocks while avoiding the occasional prickly pear cactus, to the rock ledge above the cave. Lila had us wait until everyone had arrived before beginning our final descent to the cave entrance. Between the ledge where we waited and the cave entrance there was a switchback or two and also a very steep section. One hiker made a straight down descent. We posed in front of the cave for a group photograph.

Left to right: Gary Jacobson (front), Bill Thomas, Karl Sink, Frank Lombardo, Joanne Hennings, Lila Wright, George Everman (kneeling),Daisy Williams, Roger Fenske, Betty Wolters, Jim Gibson, Bob Whiting, Joyce Arregui, Dave Beach, Loren Pritzel and Peggy Thomas – photograph by George using time delay

At the cave we took plenty of time to explore, add something to the Geo Cache box found there and have something more to eat.

When we were far back in the cave Lila had us turn off all our flashlights and headlamps so that we could experience total darkness and silence. We were a large group and didn't maintain silence for more than a very short time.

The following photographs showing hikers exploring the cave (below left) and hikers outlined in the cave mouth (below right) were taken from within the cave.

Peggy, Lila and Loren exploring               Hikers outlined in the cave mouth

The rough bushwhacking down the canyon below Grandma's Cave involved very steep sections of slightly wet dirt with some very slippery spots and a canyon bottom filled with rocks and boulders to sort our way through. Eventually we found a trail (left) located on the north wall of the canyon a bit above the canyon floor and followed it most of the way back, thus avoiding the rocky bottom.

Apparently this route is well-known as a more direct route to get up to the cave. We met several young men on their way up to the cave as we were coming down. One of them told me that he had been using this route to get to the cave ever since he was thirteen years old.

This hike was 2.4 miles long, the highest elevation was 6398 feet and the total ascent was 1348 feet.

The GPS track for this hike is shown on the included map. The route taken to the cave is shown in red and the return is shown in blue.

This report was written by Daisy Williams and assembled, edited and posted online by Ellis Price with help from Lila Wright.

1 https://smile.amazon.com/Sedona-Hikes-Arizona-Revised-2003-01-02/dp/B01K13Z9D8/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484867142&sr=1-2&keywords=sedona+hikes+2003

2 www.createspace.com/3996907